Angels star Mike Trout will miss rest of the 2023 season
Mike Trout will not play for the Angels again this season, manager Phil Nevin told reporters Sunday morning in Minnesota.
After placing himself on the injured list on Aug. 23 — in an effort to continue recovering from the hamate he ruptured and underwent surgery in July — the Angels manager said before the team’s final game against the Twins that Trout would be on the 60-day injured list.
This is the third straight year that the 32-year-old Trout has missed significant time due to injury.
In 2021, Trout was sidelined for the remainder of the season due to a right calf strain in May. And last year he missed 30 games while recovering from a back injury.
He started this season hoping to prevent a recurrence of those two injuries, but was sidelined by a new problem.
Trout fractured his left hamate on July 3 in the first game of a series against the Padres in San Diego. In order to return to the playoffs with the team as quickly as possible, he decided to have the broken part of his hammam surgically removed to speed up the healing and recovery process.
The average return time after a Hamome fracture is usually six to eight weeks, but some MLB players have returned in as little as four weeks. Cleveland third baseman José Ramírez, for example, returned four weeks and one day after undergoing surgery in 2019 to remove his broken right hammam.
Trout made a concerted effort and returned about seven weeks after surgery after missing 38 games.
He knew that the more he played, his biggest obstacle to returning would continue to be pain tolerance. Trout assumed that the pain he felt would be so bearable that it would not interfere with his punches.
“It definitely hurts, but I talked to some doctors and they told me I can’t hurt it any more,” Trout said the afternoon before his brief return. “I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t feel anything in my hand right now. So just go in there and be careful, come in every day and try to keep the pain down.”
The Angels also performed imaging studies on his hand and wrist, general manager Perry Minasian said, before he played in that one game against the Reds on Aug. 22, and everything looked structurally sound.
He managed one for four in that game and ended up feeling more injured than he expected.
The Angels decided to send him back to the IL after the next day’s games, a doubleheader with the Reds in which he did not play.
“I wasn’t right. I was in more than bearable pain,” Trout told reporters in New York before the Angels’ next series against the Mets on August 25. The next day, it really, really hurt.
“And I just had a conversation with the coaches and [manager Phil Nevin] And [general manager Perry Minasian] …we called just to go back [on the IL]Do it right and then come back when it’s right.”
He said he was most affected by it during his swing, both when his racket touched the ball and when he swung without touching it.
“It felt a little good in the first shot,” Trout explained. “And then when I started fouling some shots, it wasn’t really an offense anymore for me. It was more like, “Man, my hand really hurts.” But I just tried to get through it. Probably shouldn’t have done it. But I tried.”
Trout’s move to the 60-day IL freed up roster space for the Angels to draft right-handed pitcher Carson Fullmer. He will take left-hander Tyler Anderson’s spot after Anderson was placed on the IL due to a left knee injury. Also completing their season on the IL are Anthony Rendon (shin), who Nevin said Saturday hasn’t made enough progress to return, and CJ Cron (back), who returned to the IL on Sunday.
